Visa and Mastercard pilot new biometric standard in South Africa

27 July 2016

Leading payment processing companies Visa and Mastercard are partnering Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) for a launch of a new biometric standard to provide secure authentication access for the consumers to the financial services in South Africa. According to the reports the companies decided to team up last March for a new standard.

Next September announcement was made by Visa on its having developed the biometric code for EMV plastic card payments, and about its plans to test the idea in South Africa with the major national banks. The first bank to implement the biometric standard is not known yet. Meantime, the companies state it has been piloted with the European banks since 2014. It is expected it will be introduced by many financial organizations quite soon.

An executive of PASA made a note that the biometric authentication will go further from the banks to other institutions with the South African Social Security Agency expressing its wish to implement the system for its transactions.

At the moment FIDO Alliance authentication standards consortium is partnering with EMVCo over the introduction of chip card specification which will feature biometric authentication too.